Language Contact Situation

Language contact situation directly give the way to linguistic changes. Millet, believed that grammatical loans can only occur when the source and receiving systems are very similar (1921:87), and according to Jakobson ‘a language accepts foreign structural elements only when they correspond to its own tendencies of development’ (1962 [1938]:241). These beliefs probably arose ultimately from a conviction that the Comparative Method would be threatened by the existence of extensive structural diffusion. Schuchardt, a major critic of what he saw as the ‘Neogrammarians’ intellectual rigidity in ignoring foreign interference, was the founder of pidgin/creole studies, because mixed languages like pidgins and creoles challenge

Word-borrowing, more or less, is a universal linguistic phenomenon. However, it is an accepted fact that for all kinds of linguistic borrowing a sustained and intimate contact between two or more speech communities is a pre-condition. This statement is very much applicable in case of Urdu, where the sociocultural contact between the native population speaking different dialects (Khari Boli, Haryanvi and Braj Bhasha, etc.) and the Muslim soldiers belonging to different nationalities (Arab, Iranian, Turkish, Afghan, and central Asians, etc.), came to India during the 12th century AD, resulted in the emergence of Urdu as a new language, and later on in the process of linguistic amalgamation including lexical borrowing. The presence of a large number of loan words from different languages is evident from the historical overview of the present-day Urdu vocabulary. However, Urdu has been especially hospitable toward languages like Persian and Arabic. One of the most important factors behind a rapid amalgamation of Arabic words into Urdu vocabulary happens to be the acceptance of Islam in various parts of the Indian subcontinent. The large number of Persian loan words in Urdu vocabulary can be assigned to the fact that Persian happened to be the language of the

Thomas and Kaufman (1988:37) have defined borrowing as ‘the incorporation of features into a group’s native language by speakers of that language; the native language is maintained but is changed by the addition of the incorporated features’. Einar Haugen (1950) defines borrowing as, “the borrowing takes place without the lender’s consent or even awareness, and the borrowing is under no obligation to repay the loan. One might as well call it stealing, were it not that the owner is deprived of nothing and feels no usage to recover his goods. The process might be called an adaptation, for the speaker does adopt elements from a second language into his own”. In a journey of a language, ‘words’ usually migrate from a place to another with cultures, the users of language(s). Naturally speaking, there are many halts, stations and environments that affect the linguistic achievement. In other words, there are so many linguistic, social, cultural and political variables that attribute to the process of linguistic borrowing. As earlier mentioned Urdu has borrowed its vocabulary from Persian, Turkish and Arabic. It was believed that these foreign languages were ‘mixed’ and may not be real or genuine, however, Muslims welcomed foreign languages and followed them for some reasons. Consequently, Urdu was born in the Indian sub-continent. Historically, when a language with a lot of foreign words try